Tag: History

Is the Iran War Really About Iran?

America’s descent into authoritarianism and fascism

BILL ASTORE

MAY 10, 2026

Can you win a war that isn’t really about the country you’re fighting? Where the aims keep shifting and the motivations are dishonest? We know from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Israel more or less forced the Trump administration’s hand in attacking Iran. We know from Joe Kent’s testimony that Iran posed no imminent threat to the U.S. We know from President Trump himself that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated” in previous strikes. So why wage war on Iran?

The way we label wars is illustrative of our confusion and dishonesty. “The Vietnam War”: more accurately, it was the U.S. government’s war on Vietnam. “The Iraq War”: again, the U.S. government’s war on Iraq. Same with Afghanistan. Same with Iran. America wages constant wars against other nations and peoples; these wars are really variations on a theme of militarism, imperialism, and profiteering.

Cui bono, who benefits, is always the question to ask. The answer is usually some combination of the military-industrial complex, U.S. oligarchical corporate interests, and, in the case of wars in the Middle East, Zionist Israel and fossil fuel interests.

By its nature, a constant state of warfare feeds authoritarianism and stifles freedom and democracy. Wars favor oligarchs and dictators and feed fascist tendencies. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare, James Madison warned.

There is no “victory” to be had in these wars, not for the American people. This was true of the Vietnam War and it’s also true of the current war on Iran. America is losing and will lose because these wars weaken freedom and democracy while reinforcing authoritarian and fascistic elements.

America, as in people like us, can only “win” when these wars are ended.

All this has been on my mind as I recalled this review that I wrote (see below) on why the U.S. lost the Vietnam War. 

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American Reckoning: Why the U.S. Lost the Vietnam War

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Written in 2015.

Christian G. Appy, professor of history at U-Mass Amherst, has written a new and telling book on the Vietnam War: American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity (New York, Viking Press). Reading his book made me realize a key reason why the U.S. lost the war: for U.S. leaders it was never about Vietnam and the Vietnamese people. Rather, for these men the war was always about something else, a “something else” that constantly shifted and changed. Whereas for North Vietnam and its leaders, the goal was simple and unchanging: expel the foreign intruder, whether it was the Japanese or the French or the Americans, and unify Vietnam, no matter the cost.

Appy’s account is outstanding in showing the shifting goals of U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis Vietnam. In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. first supported the French in their attempts to reassert control over their former colony. When the French failed, the U.S. saw Vietnam through a thoroughly red-tinted lens. The “fall” of a newly created South Vietnam was seen as the first domino in a series of potential Communist victories in Asia. Vietnam itself meant little economically to American interests, but U.S. leaders were concerned about Malaysia and Indonesia and their resources. So to stop that first domino from falling, the U.S. intervened to prop up a “democratic” government in South Vietnam that was never democratic, a client state whose staying power rested entirely on U.S. “advisers” (troops) and weapons and aid.

Again, as Appy convincingly demonstrates, for U.S. leaders the war was never about Vietnam. Under Eisenhower, it was about stopping the first domino from falling; under Kennedy, it was a test case for U.S. military counterinsurgency tactics and Flexible Response; under Johnson, it was a test of American resolve and credibility and “balls”; and under Nixon, it was the pursuit of “peace with honor” (honor, that is, for the Nixon Administration). And this remained true even after South Vietnam collapsed in 1975. Then the Vietnam War, as Appy shows, was reinterpreted as a uniquely American tragedy. Rather than a full accounting of the war and America’s mistakes and crimes in it, the focus was on recovering American pride, to be accomplished in part by righting an alleged betrayal of America’s Vietnam veterans.

In the Reagan years, as Appy writes, American veterans, not the Vietnamese people, were:

portrayed as the primary victims of the Vietnam War. The long, complex history of the war was typically reduced to a set of stock images that highlighted the hardships faced by U.S. combat soldiers—snake-infested jungles, terrifying ambushes, elusive guerrillas, inscrutable civilians, invisible booby traps, hostile antiwar activists. Few reports informed readers that at least four of five American troops in Vietnam carried out noncombat duties on large bases far away from those snake-infested jungles. Nor did they focus sustained attention on the Vietnamese victims of U.S. warfare. By the 1980s, mainstream culture and politics promoted the idea that the deepest shame related to the Vietnam War was not the war itself, but America’s failure to embrace its military veterans.” (p. 241)

Again, the Vietnam War for U.S. leaders was never truly about Vietnam. It was about them. This is powerfully shown by LBJ’s crude comments and gestures about the war. Johnson acted to protect his Great Society initiatives; he didn’t want to suffer the political consequences of having been seen as having “lost” Vietnam to communism; but he also saw Vietnam as a straightforward test of his manhood. When asked by reporters why he continued to wage war in Vietnam, what it was really all about, LBJ unzipped his pants, pulled out his penis, and declared, “This is why!” (p. 82).

Withdrawal, of course, was never an option. As Appy insightfully notes,

LBJ and most of the other key Vietnam policymakers never imagined that withdrawal from Vietnam would be an act of courage. In one sense this moral blindness is baffling because these same men prided themselves on their pragmatic, hardheaded realism, their ability to cut through sentiment and softhearted idealism to face the most difficult realities of foreign affairs. They could see that the war was failing. But they could not pull out. A deeper set of values trumped their most coherent understandings of the war. They simply could not accept being viewed as losers. A ‘manly man’ must always keep fighting.” (p. 84)

A few pages later, Appy cites Nixon’s speech on the bombing of Cambodia, when Nixon insisted the U.S. must not stand by “like a pitiful, helpless giant,” as further evidence of this “primal” fear of presidential impotence and defeat.

Even when defeat stared American leaders in the face, they blinked, then closed their eyes and denied what they had seen. Beginning with Gerald Ford in 1975, America shifted the blame for defeat onto the South Vietnamese, with some responsibility being assigned to allegedly traitorous elements on the homefront, such as “Hanoi Jane” (Fonda). As Appy writes, “Instead of calling for a great national reckoning of U.S. responsibility in Vietnam, Ford called for a ‘great national reconciliation.’ It was really a call for a national forgetting, a willful amnesia.” (p. 224)

As a result of this “willful amnesia,” most Americans never fully faced the murderous legacies of the Vietnam War, especially the cost to the peoples of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Instead, our leaders and government encouraged us to focus on America’ssuffering. They told us to look forward, not backward, while keeping faith in America as the exceptional nation.

Appy notes in his introduction that America needs “an honest accounting of our history” if we are “to reject—fully and finally—the stubborn insistence that our nation has been a unique and unrivaled force for good in the world.” (p. xix) American Reckoning provides such an honest accounting. But are Americans truly ready and willing to put aside national pride, nurtured by a willed amnesia and government propaganda, to confront the limits as well as the horrors of American power as it is exercised in foreign lands?

Evidence from recent wars and military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere still suggests that Americans prefer amnesia, or to see other peoples through a tightly restricted field of view. Far too often, that field of view is a thoroughly militarized one, most recently captured in the crosshairs of an American sniper’s scope. Appy challenges us to broaden that view while removing those crosshairs.

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Addendum (2026): Self-styled Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has already floated the lie that Democrats (and a few Republicans) are betraying the country by seeking to constrain the Trump administration in its disastrous war on Iran. What Hegseth is saying, essentially, is that Congress is committing treason in attempting to exercise its constitutional duties.

Always when the warmongers lose a war, they resort to the hoary “stab-in-the-back” myth. Rare indeed is someone like Robert McNamara, who admitted decades after the Vietnam War that he had been wrong, terribly wrong, to prosecute that war.

Usually in America, those who are most unrepentant about war are the ones hired to comment on or wage the next one.

Support Our Troops

What It Really Means

BILL ASTORE

MAY 07, 2026

The other day, I was reading an old Atlantic Monthly and came across the following cartoon:

That is one powerful image. I like the tiny heads on the pallbearers. They make me think of the posturing politicians who tell us to “support our troops” while sending them to die in illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional wars.

That cartoon was published near the end of 2007, when America’s disastrous war of choice in Iraq was supposedly improving due to the Petraeus Surge. Of course, General David Petraeus qualified his surge by saying its gains might prove “fragile” and “reversible.” And so they proved.

“Support our troops” is a catchphrase, almost a mantra, often used by cynical politicians to suppress dissent about their disastrous wars of choice. Basically, dissenters are accused of being unpatriotic because their criticism allegedly betrays the troops and weakens national resolve. It’s a BS argument but it’s often compelling and even convincing to some.

Americans have a civic religion defined by the Pledge of Allegiance, the flag, the National Anthem, military parades and pageantry, and U.S. history taught as heritage and as a celebration of American goodness and greatness. When you step outside of that, when you criticize it, dissent from it, you must be prepared to be attacked as a heretic.

Back in 2010, I wrote an article for TomDispatch in which I argued that not every American troop is a hero. I argued instead that real heroes are few and far between, and that the ideal of heroism shouldn’t be associated so closely, even almost exclusively, with military service. These are obvious points (to me, at least), but I took some flak for suggesting that merely donning a military uniform doesn’t and shouldn’t make one a “hero.”

I remain convinced that hyping the troops as universal “heroes” isn’t a form of support. The troops know better. If you truly want to support them, listen to them. Be an informed and knowledgeable citizen. Speak your mind and don’t be afraid to criticize those who seek to use the military for dishonorable or indefensible purposes.

Since this is America, theoretically land of the free, feel free as well to speak out against the military. Our founders were suspicious of large standing armies and were wary of wars as being especially pernicious to democracy.

We Americans celebrate our troops for defending freedom, yet we paradoxically attack those who try to exercise their freedom by denouncing war and militarism. You can’t have it both ways. Unless you want hypocrisy instead of democracy, you can’t celebrate freedom while denying it.

This was, of course, the so-called original sin of the American republic: celebrating freedom while also enshrining the institution of slavery. Rank hypocrisy led inexorably to the U.S. Civil War.

As a retired U.S. military officer, I’ve been thanked for my service more often than I’ve been denounced as a murderous agent of American empire. It’s easy to accept the thanks; slurs and attacks are what they are. People sometimes think to defame or demean others is a way to elevate themselves. So be it.

Another aspect of “support our troops” is communal ritual to mark the passing of local “heroes.” Such rituals take various forms. In my community, one involves a mass motorcycle ride in memory of “fallen” troops killed since 9/11. The language used is that of America’s civic religion, celebrating our “great country” and those “heroes” who’ve made the “ultimate sacrifice.”

It’s easy to acquiesce to that language and sentiment. It’s also easy to attack it and dismiss it as patriotic claptrap.

I see it as something else: a communal rite. A recognition of sacrifice. Even if that sacrifice was not in a worthy cause.

I’m not a fan of these communal rituals and the often cynical uses to which they’re put, but I recognize their potency and the need of some people to participate in them. It’s a collective expression of belonging, of grief, of community. A place to find meaning.

A reader put it very well to me in response to my article on heroes in 2010. I saved the letter and have never quoted from it before but I’d like to do so now:

I think the reason we see the “heroification” of so many is a desperate need of so many to feel a sense of self worth. This is especially true in the working class, who have seen their cultural value, their hopes for the future and the quality of their lives decline so radically in recent decades.

This week here in town we see the massive outpouring for the fallen Marine by those who need so desperately to feel a part of something bigger than themselves, when someone like themselves is honored. I see this as poignant in ways that go far beyond the family’s loss.

This is well and sensitively put. How often in our communal settings are “ordinary” people celebrated for anything? Our culture most often celebrates the rich, the powerful, Hollywood and sports “stars,” while neglecting the everyday heroism (or, if not heroism, acts of generosity) of people from all walks of life.

In sum, “our” troops don’t want to put on pedestals and plinths. They certainly don’t want to be carried in flag-draped caskets. And most don’t want to be celebrated as heroes because they know they haven’t earned it. What they want, I think, is to be understood. What they don’t want is to be wasted, to be betrayed, to be misused.

Who among us would want to see their life as a waste, who would wish to be betrayed, who would seek to be misused?

With Memorial Day approaching, it is good to ponder the wise words of Andy Rooney in the video below. Troops don’t give their lives. Their lives are taken from them. Something so precious shouldn’t be taken so lightly by leaders with neither compassion nor conscience. Even better, as Andy Rooney suggests, is a future where war withers away and peace brings out the very best in us.

The Great Retreat from Germany

News out of the Pentagon is that the great retreat from Germany is beginning. Five thousand U.S. troops are being withdrawn at the request of a petulant president who can’t stand criticism of his disastrous war of choice with Iran. (Then again, maybe it wasn’t a war of choice, as it appears his commander-in-chief, Bibi Netanyahu, gave him none.)

Other countries to have annoyed Trump include Spain and Italy. In Trump’s words: “Italy has not been of any help to us and Spain has been horrible, absolutely horrible.”And we might cite Denmark here as well for refusing to hand over Greenland. Look for more U.S. troop withdrawals as “punishment.”

America! Bad Boy! Get your hand out of that cookie jar!

And wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing! The U.S. empire, to use an expression by my smarter wife today, simply has its hands in too many cookie jars. All those overseas bases (750 or more), all those overseas troop deployments, why, exactly, do we have all these? Perhaps during the height of the Cold War, an extensive network of overseas bases had a certain strategic logic in efforts to contain Soviet expansion, but ever since 1991, most of these bases have made little sense strategically. Much like Topsy, they just grew, and grew some more.

An uncontained U.S. empire features an increasingly unconstrained military-industrial complex flush with cash. This is not a good thing. The complex is drunk on money and power; future disasters are guaranteed.

Paradoxically, if America wants stronger, saner, national defense, we must make major cuts to the imperial war budget. Giving the empire yet more cash, yet more power, is a recipe for continual failure on the grandest of scales.

I don’t like the saying, but sometimes less really can be more. Less (as in lower) spending on the military will produce more (as in safer) conditions here in the U.S. and across the world.

My message to world leaders: If you have U.S. military bases in your country, please, please, insult and annoy Trump. It might be the most effective way to downsize the U.S. empire and to bring the troops home. 

How Much Is Enough for National Defense?

$600 Billion Seems Reasonable

BILL ASTORE

APR 26, 2026

What is the right amount of money to spend on national defense?

It’s not an easy question because answers depend on goals. On commitments.

So, for example, I’m committed to the ideal of the American republic. That republic should focus on defense of the nation. I don’t support the American empire. I don’t favor an offensive military. I don’t believe defense is about global domination. Offense is enabled by full-spectrum dominance; defense doesn’t require it.

So much of what America spends on “defense” goes to weapons makers like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and RTX. It’s advertised as military Keynesianism but it’s more like corporate welfare for what used to be called the merchants of death.

I don’t value weapons as “investments.” I see weapons as Ike saw them in 1953. They are a form of theft. They steal funding from schools, hospitals, libraries, fire stations, and other much-needed improvements to national services and infrastructure.

Yes, America has to defend itself, but an imperial military that is vastly overfunded is an albatross around the neck of a declining republic.

A wildly offensive military that seeks global dominance—the budget for that military is almost boundless. It’s not surprising, then, that this is the vision we’re sold. The idea that the U.S. military must be second to none and dominate everywhere at almost any cost. And what a cost!

An essential part of this imperial vision is that diplomacy is best done with bombs, as Pete Hegseth boasted. That diplomacy isn’t even needed, really, because as Trump says, America holds all the (military) cards. If countries like Iran keep resisting, threaten them with extermination.

A black hole for money

An imperial military of global dominance based on massively expensive weapons systems and exterminatory threats drives a “defense” budget of $1 trillion or more. Trump, of course, is asking for $1.5 trillion for FY2027, a staggering 50% increase. This insane vision of exterminatory war is enabled by colossal spending on Death Star-like weaponry.

Meanwhile, Members of Congress fight for their share of a rapidly expanding military procurement pie. Shrink the pie? Forget it! They only want their fair share of the pie (or the pork) for their district. Lobbyists from those imperial merchants of death ensure that Congress stays the military (and militarized) course.

To return to my question: Assuming we’re talking about national defense in a republic that believes in diplomacy and that isn’t forever seeking dragons overseas to slay, I’m guessing that roughly $600 billion a year would suffice for the Pentagon. That is still an enormous sum of money. That healthy amount assumes America can avoid fighting wars of choice and stop its various foolhardy military interventions across the globe.

Ten years ago, $600 billion was roughly the baseline for the Pentagon budget even as America was still in Afghanistan and waging a “global war on terror.” Sure, there’s been some inflation, a weakening of the dollar, but that ballpark figure seems reasonable for a military focused on true national defense rather than one based on total global dominance.

One axiom that should always rule: A republic should not spend one more dollar than necessary on military might. If $600 billion is too high, I’d be happy to see a lower amount.

One coda: No more money for the Pentagon until it’s able to pass an audit.

Joe Kent’s Principled Resignation

And Tulsi Gabbard’s Problematic Response

BILL ASTORE

MAR 18, 2026

Joe Kent’s principled resignation letter, in which he calls out the influence of Israel and AIPAC on President Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran, illustrates the nature of power and dissent in government circles.

The main response is denunciation. Leading the way was Trump, whose response to the news was basically good riddance even as he claimed that Kent, a former Green Beret with extensive combat experience, was “weak on security.” Organizations like the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC suggested that Kent was trafficking in age-old anti-semitic tropes (apparently it’s “anti-semitic” to suggest that Israel and AIPAC have influence over the President and Congress).

In the age of social media, denunciation is nearly instantaneous — and often unhinged. I’ve even seen calls to have Kent investigated under the espionage act!

The method to the madness is obvious: discredit Kent by smears, attack him as disloyal, even as such efforts are designed to intimidate others from airing their legitimate concerns.

Kent deserves a lot of credit for going on the record because he surely knew he’d be denounced. 

Not quite denouncing him, but showing (so far) conformity that’s more than disappointing is Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and Kent’s former boss. Previously, Tulsi was on the record as being strongly against regime-change wars and especially against war with Iran. She’s often made speeches in the name of her “brothers and sisters in uniform.” Yet so far she has quietly abetted Trump’s policies and actions in his foolish and illegal war against Iran. 

I fear Tulsi’s “brothers and sisters” will pay a high price for her complicity.

Here’s her message posted yesterday at X/Twitter:

Donald Trump was overwhelmingly elected by the American people to be our President and Commander in Chief. As our Commander in Chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat, and whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people and our country. 

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for helping coordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform his decisions. 

After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion.

This is carefully-worded nonsense, designed to satisfy Trump and his handlers. I bolded a few obvious BS phrases. First, Trump wasn’t “overwhelmingly” elected president, though Trump loves to think he was. Second, anyone who knows how Trump operates can’t imagine him “carefully reviewing” all the intelligence, but perhaps Tulsi is being cute here, since she adds the intel “before him.” (I truly wonder how much of the DNI’s intel actually reached Trump, how much he truly read and reviewed; not much, I’d wager.)

Finally, there’s the notion of an “imminent threat,” which Iran truly didn’t pose to U.S. national security, not before the Israeli/U.S. attacks. And the usual dismissal of Iran as “terrorist Islamist,” i.e. “bad people” we don’t like.

I’ve been a Tulsi supporter for many years and I wrote that she’d make a fine DNI. Recent events are proving me wrong. Her message on X in response to Kent’s resignation was more than disappointing. I’m hoping she also resigns for cause, but perhaps she thinks she can do more as an insider to restrain the worst impulses of Trump, his toadies, and those who have always spoiled for a war against Iran. Her resignation, I think, would be more powerful than her restraining influence (assuming she has any influence).

Of course, if she does resign for cause, she will be smeared and denounced, and not for the first time.

Readers, what do you make of all this?

Addendum: Perhaps I should add that I don’t agree with everything in Kent’s resignation letter, nor would I be likely to vote for him, assuming he runs for office again. His resignation letter is useful exactly because he was a strong Trump loyalist whose military record earns him respect among those who are otherwise unlikely to question Trump and the official narrative. In short, for me this isn’t about Kent and his character, It’s about his recognition that there wasn’t an imminent threat from Iran and his willingness to highlight the roles played by Israel and AIPAC in U.S. politics and foreign policy. As a Trump insider, his words carry persuasive weight. They could also indicate a fracturing of support for Trump’s disastrous war with Iran.

The Unfinished Work of “All Men Are Created Equal”

Thinking About the Declaration of Independence

MAR 10, 2026

Note to Readers: Here’s an article I wrote for the LA Progressive as America marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

When I look back at my old parchment from 1976, I see noble words written by courageous but deeply imperfect men. We remain imperfect as well.

  • This article is part of the series that addresses the question whether it was hypocrisy or hope when 250 years ago we stated in our Declaration of Independence that “All Men Are Created Equal.” Hypocrisy because more than half of the declaration signers were slaveholders. Plus, how about women, Native Americans, and the unpropertied? But also hopeful because sometime in the future those groups might (and would) be given the vote.

I was thirteen during our nation’s bicentennial in 1976. To celebrate, I had a parchment reproduction of the Declaration of Independence, something that meant a great deal to me at the time. I still remember John Hancock’s glorious signature—defiant, oversized, unmistakable. Take that, King George III.

Of course, declaring independence in 1776 didn’t make it so—history rarely bends simply because words demand it. The thirteen colonies had to fight a long, debilitating, and often brutal war for nearly six years. Even after Yorktown in 1781, George Washington and others struggled to keep the fragile new nation from collapsing into acrimonious division. True independence came only in 1783, when the British Empire formally recognized the former colonies through treaty. Even then, conflict lingered. The United States would fight Britain again in the War of 1812, a war that included the burning of Washington, D.C., underscoring how precarious American independence remained.

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Rereading the Declaration later in life reminded me of the cleverness of its authors. They framed their cause in terms of noble ideals, which was smart, but they also personalized their grievances by casting blame on an allegedly tyrannical king, which was even smarter. By the standards of the eighteenth century, King George III was neither unusually cruel nor especially despotic. He expected obedience to the Crown, wanted the colonies to pay for their own defense, and sought order over disorder. If anything, he may not have been tyrannical enough to enforce compliance.

Still, the founders skillfully appealed to Parliament and to English citizens’ jealousy for their own rights—life, liberty, and property (or, as Thomas Jefferson famously revised it, the pursuit of happiness). This was the Age of Reason, after all, a time when the divine right of kings no longer went unquestioned. Even so, the Declaration often reads like a laundry list of complaints against the king—complaints that were not always fair or fully convincing.

Most colonists, at least early on, were not seeking a radical break with Britain. They wanted the traditional rights of Englishmen, especially as educated men who owned property. No matter how “enlightened” they considered themselves, these were men of their times: slaveholders like Jefferson, men who saw no reason to extend the right to vote to women, to enslaved Black people, or even to white men without property.

Yet embedded within the Declaration was a promise more radical than its authors likely intended. The assertion that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights planted a seed that women, Black Americans, and other marginalized groups would later seize upon. Like the colonists themselves, these groups had to fight for those rights. Power, as the saying goes, concedes nothing without a demand—and rarely concedes much without sustained struggle.

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“All Men Are Created Equal”: Hypocrisy or Hope?

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The same remains true today. Declaring America to be a democracy where all are equally respected does not make it so. Our country is more oligarchy than democracy, a land divided between the haves—and the have-mores—and the have-nots, rather than a nation that shares equitably in its collective bounty. We may have won independence from Britain, but we did not win freedom from the forces of history or from the imperfections of human nature.

America remains a place of contention, where the meaning of the American Revolution is still argued over and fought about. Yet there is enduring, aspirational nobility in the idea that we are all in this together, still striving to form a more perfect union. That goal is not achieved through declarations alone, no matter how brave or eloquent. It must be pursued, defended, and renewed every day—against tyrants large and petty, foreign and domestic.

When I look back at my old parchment from 1976, I see noble words written by courageous but deeply imperfect men. We remain imperfect as well. The question is whether we can regain the courage, fortitude, and commitment of the founders—not to idolize them, but to continue the unfinished work they began. I believe we can. To believe otherwise is to abandon the very spirit of America’s declaration in 1776. Why not work to make it so?

That Warship Has Sailed

The Death of the Constitutional Republic

BILL ASTORE

FEB 21, 2026

My fellow Americans, it’s nice to think we have a semblance of a constitutional republic, but that warship has sailed. This time, to Iran.

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This AM, I read an interesting story on the Supreme Court’s repeal of Trump’s tariffs. Justice Neil Gorsuch made the point that his fellow justices’ interpretation of the law often changes based on whether the president is a Republican or Democrat. This, to state the obvious, is not how the law is supposed to work.

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Years ago, I spied a bumper sticker that read: “I’m already against the next war.” It’s on my mind again.

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I’ll support a war when Hollywood celebrities and sports stars willingly enlist. And when the sons and daughters of presidents and senators and CEOs happily join them in the ranks.

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Do you think it’s a coincidence that Bibi Netanyahu keeps visiting the White House even as the Trump administration prepares for yet another war in the Middle East?

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A great book for this moment is “Deadly Betrayal: The Truth About Why the United States Invaded Iraq” (2024) by Dennis Fritz. Fritz, a retired AF command chief master sergeant, was in the halls of power when the Bush/Cheney administration decided to invade Iraq in 2003. He identifies three main reasons for the Iraq War fiasco: U.S. leaders’ concerns about “credibility” and the perpetual fear of being perceived as “weak”; serving the security needs of Israel, especially by weakening Hamas and Hezbollah together with Iraq; and neocon fever dreams of imperial dominance in the Middle East connected to the control of oil.

In his conclusion, Fritz is scathingly blunt:

More than 4,500 [U.S. troops] made the ultimate sacrifice, and 100,000 have been wounded for life. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Saddam Hussein posed no threat to our national security. The Iraq War wasn’t an honest mistake. It was a calculated lie—a deadly betrayal. Our service members were used as pawns by the government to fulfill an imperialist ideology. Their sacrifice had no basis in national defense. All Americans should be outraged, and we should never let this happen again. The troops didn’t even know why they were going to war.

It saddens me to think that Fritz may soon need to write “Deadly Betrayal II” about the forthcoming war with Iran.

Insurgencies and America’s Defeat in Vietnam

An Old Paper from 1993

BILL ASTORE

JAN 29, 2026

Scrolling through old files today, I came across this paper that I prepared for a “Strategic Studies Seminar” at Oxford that I presented on 28 January 1993. Back then, I was a captain in the Air Force, and in the room were other serving and retired military officers. Anyhow, here’s what I read to my peers (and the two professors hosting the seminar) about the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. Again, this presentation is 33 years old, but I hope it’s still useful despite its age. 

Insurgencies and America’s Defeat in Vietnam (1993)

A revolutionary war is a war within a state; the ultimate aim of the insurgents is political control of the state. Nowhere is Clausewitz’s dictum of war as a continuation of politics more true than in a revolutionary war. It typically takes the form of a protracted struggle, conducted patiently and inexorably, a variant of Chinese water torture. Educating or, more accurately, indoctrinating, the people – gaining their sympathy, cooperation, and assistance – is paramount. And all people have a role to play: men and women, young and old. After World War II, insurgencies have been guided by Mao Zedong’s concept of People’s War, and inspired by a complex combination of nationalism, anti-colonialism, and communism. They have bedeviled France, Great Britain, and the United States. This paper addresses the strategy of People’s War in terms of means, ends, and will, and details some of the reasons why the United States lost the Vietnam War.

The strategic end of People’s War is simple in its boldness: the overthrow of the existing government and its replacement with an insurgent-led government. The means are incredibly complex, encompassing social, economic, psychological, military, and political dimensions, but it must be remembered that all means are directed towards the political end. Strength of will usually favors the insurgents, partly because a major goal of People’s War is to mold the minds of its followers to convince them of the righteousness of their cause.

People’s War passes through three stages. At first the insurgents get to know the people as they spread propaganda and build a political infrastructure.

Every insurgent is an ambassador for the cause. They create safe havens while intimidating opponents and neutrals, and they commit terrorist acts to undermine the legitimacy of the government. They build their safe havens on the periphery of the state, usually in rural or impoverished areas where they can feed on the misery of the people. The more difficult the terrain, the better, whether it be the mountains of Spain and Afghanistan or the jungles of Malaya and Vietnam. They extend their control over the countryside and into the urban areas during the second stage of People’s War. They use guerrilla tactics and terrorism to further undermine the political legitimacy of the government. The main target is not the government’s troops but the will of its leaders. As they extend their physical control over the countryside, they install their own political structure to control the people. With the government’s will fatally weakened, the insurgents move to the final stage: a conventional military offensive to overthrow the government.

The three stages are not rigidly sequential, however. For example, while conducting guerrilla operations against the government, the insurgents continue to build their infrastructure, conduct terrorist acts, and spread propaganda. Even during the last stage — the general offensive — the insurgents continue stages one and two. This aspect of People’s War was well expressed by John M. Gates in the Journal of Military History in July 1990:

American conventional war doctrine does not anticipate reliance upon population within the enemy’s territory for logistical and combat support. It does not rely upon guerrilla units to fix the enemy, establish clear lines of communication, and maintain security in the rear. And it certainly does not expect enemy morale to be undermined by political cadres within the very heart of the enemy’s territory, cadres who will assume positions of political power as the offensive progresses. Yet all of these things happened in South Vietnam in 1975….

Flexibility, judgement, and comprehensiveness of methods are the keys to success. If the insurgents overestimate the weakness of the government and lose large-scale battles, they slip back into the earlier two phases and continue to work towards weakening the government for the next general offensive.

It bears repeating the primary goal of insurgents is political control. Military actions are only one tool for obtaining this control. As Mao cautions, guerrilla operations are just “one aspect of the revolutionary struggle.” The insurgent appeals to the hearts and minds of the people. He is, after all, one of them. Too much can be made of Mao’s “fish and sea” analogy. The insurgent is not just a fish that swims in the sea of the people: his purpose is to convert the sea to his purpose. He wants to walk on water. He employs any method to command the sea to his will. He would prefer ideological converts, true believers, but converts through terror are acceptable. Those who can’t be converted he ruthlessly kills. That his methods produce squeamishness among some in the West only accentuates their value to him.

As a strategy, People’s War is difficult but not impossible to counter. The United States defeated the Philippine insurrection in the first two decades of this century, and after World War II Great Britain put down a communist insurgency in Malaya. More famous, however, have been the stunning successes of People’s War: Mao’s victory over Japan and the Nationalists in the 1930s and ‘40s, and Ho Chi Minh’s victories over France and the United States in the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. Perhaps most unsettling was America’s defeat in Vietnam. How could the world’s foremost superpower lose to, in the words of General Richard G. Stilwell in 1980, a “fourth-rate half-country?”

There are no simple answers to America’s defeat, although Hollywood tells us otherwise. A theory still believed by some in the US military is a variation of the German “stab-in-the-back” legend of the Great War. Our hands were tied by meddling civilians who didn’t let the military fight and win the war. One American soldier is the equal of hundreds of pajama-clad midgets, or so it appears in the Rambo flicks. A wretched, dishonorable government also abandoned our POWs to the godless communists, now rescued several times over by Stallone, Chuck Norris, and other martial arts experts. That such films make money is an affront to the genuine sacrifices of Americans represented so tragically by the Vietnam War memorial in Washington.

Perhaps such sentiments seem out of place in a paper devoted to a dispassionate strategic analysis of America’s role in Vietnam. Yet my feelings are perhaps typical of the emotionalism that still surrounds this topic among Americans. A dispassionate critique from an American, let alone an American service member, may still be impossible; nevertheless, I’ll give it a shot.

The United States lost the war for several related reasons. First, we fought the wrong kind of war. As the Navy and especially the Air Force built up their nuclear forces, the army chaffed against its “New Look” and diminished role in the 1950s. Under Kennedy and Johnson, the Army had a new doctrine – Flexible Response – and an opportunity – the Vietnam War – to prove its worth. Vietnam was to be the proving ground for a revitalized Army.

The opposite proved to be the case because the Army pursued the wrong strategy. From 1965-68, when we sent more than half a million troops to Vietnam, the US Army tried to fight a conventional war against the Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA). As LTG Harry Kinnard, commander of the Army’s elite 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), put it, “I wanted to make them fight our kind of war. I wanted to turn it into a conventional war – boundaries – and here we go, and what are you going to do to stop us?” Obeying Mao’s teachings, the VC and NVA wisely avoided stand up fights. The Army responded with search-and-destroy operations to find, fix and kill the enemy. The goal was attrition through decisive battles, reflected by high body counts. Nothing illustrates the bankruptcy of American strategy better than the idea of body counts. In theory, a high body count means you’re killing the fish in the sea, without hurting the sea. In practice, a high body count is a measure of the success of the insurgents: they’re recruiting many fish to their cause. And in killing the fish, Americans poisoned the sea with defoliants, bomb craters, unexploded artillery shells, the list goes on. Americans were stuck in Catch-22 dilemmas: they had to destroy villages to save them, they had to destroy villagers’ crops while pursuing guerrilla bands. Such an approach flies in the face of Mao’s “Three Rules and Eight Remarks,” which exhibit a profound respect for the people and their property.

The Vietnam War Memorial in DC

After killing, or perhaps more often not killing, the guerrillas, the Army left, and the guerrillas regained control of the area. This did not disturb LTG Stanley Larson, who observed that if guerrillas returned, “we’ll go back in and kill more of the sons of bitches.” But the VC and NVA retained the initiative, had plenty of manpower, and time was on their side.

Why did the Army pursue such a faulty strategy? In part due to the legacy of World War II, particularly American experience in the Pacific. In island-hopping to Japan, Americans gained faith in massive firepower and lost interest in controlling land. The islands were a means to an end, not the end itself, and success could be measured in some sense by the number of Japanese casualties. Such was not the case in Vietnam, where control of the land was essential to winning the support of the people. Part of the Army’s problem was its lack of experience in counterinsurgency (or COIN) operations. Ronald Spector reports that in the 1950s, COIN operations were limited to four hours in most infantry training courses. What little was taught focused on preventing a conventional enemy from holding raids or infiltrating rear areas. But in the end, the Army fought the war it was trained to fight: a conventional war of maneuver and massive firepower. This worked well in Desert Storm, but failed in Vietnam.

In contrast to the Army, the Marines were far more aware of the nature of the war they were fighting, reports Andrew Krepinevich. They combined 15 marines and 34 Popular Force territorial troops (who lived in and provided security for a village or hamlet) into combat action platoons (CAPs). These CAPs sought to destroy insurgent infrastructure, protect the people and the government infrastructure, organize local intelligence networks, and train local paramilitary troops. In other words, they adopted traditional COIN tactics. But the Army ran the show in Vietnam, and its leaders rejected the Marines’ approach.

The Marines were not alone in their appreciation of the multidimensional aspects of COIN. Robert Komer’s Phoenix program also targeted the Viet Cong infrastructure, but the efforts of the CIA were not well coordinated with those of the military or the State Department, let alone the South Vietnamese. In fact Westmoreland refused to create a combined command to coordinate American actions with those of the South Vietnamese. The latter were an especially neglected resource. Admittedly, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) was corrupt and at times incompetent, but part of the problem was caused by American mistraining and the Army’s contempt. In the 1950s, American military advisors trained ARVN to repel a conventional invasion from the north, using North Korea as a model. From 1965-68, the US Army gave ARVN the static security mission, judged to be of low importance by the Army. US advisors assigned to help ARVN recognized their careers were endangered: they would advance far quicker if they had “true” combat assignments. After years of neglect, ARVN was built up with billions of US dollars during Nixon’s Vietnamization policy (and that’s exactly what it was – a policy, not a strategy), but by 1969 the rot had gone too far. ARVN lacked a unifying national spirit, VC agents had penetrated the ranks, and the officers were thoroughly politicized. Our ally always thought we’d be there if they ran into trouble, but they didn’t understand how American government worked. As Ambassador Bui Diem explained in 1990, “Our faith in America was total, and our ignorance was equally total.” South Vietnam paid the price in 1975.

Could the United States have won the Vietnam War if we had followed a proper strategy? This question may be unanswerable and ultimately moot, but it’s worth discussing. First, one must admit the war may not have been worth winning. Hannah Arendt has stated the Vietnam War was a case of excess means applied for minor aims in a region of marginal interest. In retrospect this seems irrefutable, but in the climate of the Cold War and Containment Vietnam seemed a critical theater in which communist aggression had to be stopped. Second, one must admit the United States was not protecting a viable government in South Vietnam: we were trying to create one. But we were creating one in our image. We ignored the Vietnamese culture and destroyed their economy with our hard currency. Rear area troops with money to spend spread prostitution and drugs in the streets of Saigon. In short, we alienated the people instead of winning them over to our cause. The few people we did win over were terrorized and often killed by the Viet Cong. Even following a proper COIN strategy, victory would have taken 5-10 more years at least. With weak support from the American people, (the “Silent Majority” was silent due to its ignorance and ambivalence), which waned dramatically after Tet, we never had a chance in Vietnam.

The one strategy that would have succeeded for the United States, I believe, is Mao’s People’s War. We must not deceive ourselves: if free elections had been held as promised in 1956, Ho Chi Minh would have won and unified the country. His was the legitimate government; we were trying to overthrow that government and replace it with almost any non-communist regime. In that effort, we should have formed an alliance of military, state department, intelligence, and academic resources to educate Americans in Vietnamese language and culture. These experts, with a suitable, politically-indoctrinated military force to protect them, would win the hearts of the people. Our main weapons would be our ideas and the ideological fervor of our troops, whether civilian or military. Diplomacy and military strikes would be used to cut-off the flow of arms to the VC and NVA from the Soviet Union. The political infrastructure of the enemy would be targeted, including Ho Chi Minh himself.

But this is ridiculous. Our very arrogance blinded us to the war’s complexities. We attacked the symptoms of the disease – the guerrillas and NVA – without examining what caused the disease in the body politic. Our can-do attitude was reinforced by our military traditions and our pride in our nation as being more moral than the rest of the world. We became our own worst enemy as we tried to manage the war. The commitment was there (at least among the soldiers), the energy was there, the money was there, the technology was there -the strategy, intelligence, and leadership wasn’t. People’s War proved superior to search-and-destroy, the VC and NVA intelligence proved superior to ARVN and ignorant Americans, the brilliant Giap out-thought the dedicated but shortsighted Westmoreland. The Vietnam War was ultimately unwinnable.

In the aftermath of the American-led victory over Iraq in Desert Storm, many Americans predicted the stigma of our defeat in Vietnam had finally been exorcised from our minds. Such was not the case, nor is such a result even desirable. The “dreaded V-word,” as the London Times recently described it, is being whispered again in the endless corridors of the Pentagon. If this breeds an aversion to the use of military force, harm may result; but if it leads to more thought and a more subtle study of the efficacy of military force as applied under different conditions, the dreaded V-word will have served a useful purpose, and those names engraved on the Wall in Washington will not have died in vain.

What Is Blitzkrieg?

And how much does the U.S. spend on weapons and war?

BILL ASTORE

JAN 23, 2026

Last January, I published “My Father’s Journal,” which recounts my dad’s experience surviving the Great Depression, serving in the Civilian Conservation Corps in Oregon fighting forest fires, military service in the Army during World War II, and bringing up five children during the “Baby Boom” years of the 1950s and 1960s while serving as a city firefighter. If you’re interested, it’s available at Amazon for $10 for the paperback and $5 for the Kindle version. Follow this link, and thanks!

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I received two interesting queries this week, one on Blitzkrieg and the other on how much the U.S. spends on weapons and war. On the first subject, I was asked about the characteristics of Blitzkrieg, when the concept was developed and seen in battle, and for post-World War II examples. I was also asked about Russia-Ukraine and the recent U.S. attack on Venezuela. Here are my answers:

1. Speed, surprise, combined arms, and disruption are the main characteristics of Blitzkrieg. “Combined arms” refers to all combat arms working synergistically, i.e. infantry, armor, artillery, supported by air forces (nowadays, drones might be involved in large numbers). Special forces like airborne units may also be involved. Deception and misdirection are also aspects of Blitzkrieg. The fundamental idea is to move and maneuver so quickly that the enemy can’t keep pace–to disrupt the enemy’s cohesion. To place them in an untenable position where they have to withdraw or perhaps even surrender.

2. Blitzkrieg, though associated with Nazi Germany in World War II, is an old concept in warfare. Perhaps the best practitioners were the Mongols in the 13th century. The Western concept has its roots in World War I and the stalemate of trench warfare. Ideas associated with what became known as Blitzkrieg were tried on various World War I battlefields. The idea was to break the stalemate of fixed lines and fortifications without getting into costly battles of attrition. These ideas came to maturity in World War II.

3. Blitzkrieg, perhaps ironically, is sometimes attached to the Israeli Defense Forces, as in their attacks in 1967 in the Six Day War. You might say the USA used Blitzkrieg against Iraq in 1991. Russia’s initial attack on Ukraine in 2022 was not a Blitzkrieg–it was more of an uncoordinated show of force that backfired. The USA attack on Venezuela was a “snatch and grab” kidnapping, not a military campaign per se.

*****

The second query focused on how much the U.S. spends on weaponry and war and how we measure that as a percentage of the federal budget. Here’s my answer to that:

Yes, it’s a numbers game. If you include all federal spending (including non-discretionary spending like social security and Medicare/Medicaid), it’s a smaller percentage. Roughly 15% of the federal budget.

If you focus on discretionary spending, it’s more than 50%. It depends on how you count it. If you add Pentagon spending to Homeland Security, the VA, the DOE (nukes), and interest on the federal debt due to wars and military spending, the percentage is 60% or even higher.

There are many pie and bar charts that illustrate this. See this, for example: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/

When the warmongers really want to minimize war spending, they compare it to GDP.

*****

No matter how you measure it (or attempt to minimize it), a trillion dollars is a lot of money. Of course, the best way to think of “defense” spending is from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Cross of Iron” speech in 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

That is the true cost of spending on weapons and war.

Apocalypse Soon?

Returning a Final Time to Cheyenne Mountain

BILL ASTORE

DEC 02, 2025

Hello Everyone: In 2007, I was fed up with the lies of the Bush/Cheney administration and the way civilian leadership was using the bemedaled chest of David Petraeus to deflect blame for that disastrous war. I knew then the “success” of the surge was an illusion, or, as Petraeus put it back then, “fragile” and “reversible” (and so it proved to be). I wrote an op-ed about how we the people had to save the military from itself and its own self-serving illusions. No one was interested in what I had to say; no one, that is, except Tom Engelhardt at TomDispatch. And so that led to my first “tomgram.”

Eighteen years later, I’ve reached the unlikely number of 115 essays for TomDispatch, something neither Tom nor I ever expected. And just about all those essays have been introduced by a mini-essay by Tom himself. It’s been a remarkable partnership—it’s what got my career as a writer and essayist (rather than a traditional historian) started.

This piece, my 115th, returns again to Cheyenne Mountain and nuclear war. I first wrote about my time “in the mountain” in 2008; seventeen years later, I’m even more dismayed at (and disgusted by) my country’s newfound enthusiasm for nuclear weapons and their “recapitalization.” Read on!

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It’s been 20 years since I retired from the Air Force and 40 years since I first entered Cheyenne Mountain, America’s nuclear redoubt at the southern end of the Front Range that includes Pikes Peak in Colorado. So it was with some nostalgia that I read a recent memo from General Kenneth Wilsbach, the new Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CSAF). Along with the usual warrior talk, the CSAF vowed to “relentlessly advocate” for the new Sentinel ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) and the B-21 Raider stealth bomber. While the Air Force often speaks of “investing” in new nukes, this time the CSAF opted for “recapitalization,” a remarkably bloodless term for the creation of a whole new generation of genocidal thermonuclear weapons and their delivery systems.

(Take a moment to think about that word, “creation,” applied to weapons of mass destruction. Raised Catholic, I learned that God created the universe out of nothing. By comparison, nuclear creators aren’t gods, they’re devils, for their “creation” may end with the destruction of everything. Small wonder J. Robert Oppenheimer musedthat he’d become death, the destroyer of worlds, after the first successful atomic blast in 1945.)

In my Cheyenne Mountain days, circa 1985, the new “must have” bomber was the B-1 Lancer and the new “must have” ICBM was the MX Peacekeeper. If you go back 20 to 30 years earlier than that, it was the B-52 and the Minuteman. And mind you, my old service “owns” two legs of America’s nuclear triad. (The Navy has the third with its nuclear submarines armed with Trident II missiles.) And count on one thing: it will never willingly give them up. It will always “relentlessly advocate” for the latest ICBM and nuclear-capable bomber, irrespective of need, price, strategy, or above all else their murderous, indeed apocalyptic, capabilities.

At this moment, Donald Trump’s America has more than 5,000 nuclear warheads and bombs of various sorts, while Vladimir Putin’s Russia has roughly 5,500 of the same. Together, they represent overkill of an enormity that should be considered essentially unfathomable. Any sane person would minimally argue for serious reductions in nuclear weaponry on this planet. The literal salvation of humanity may depend on it. But don’t tell that to the generals and admirals, or to the weapons-producing corporations that get rich building such weaponry, or to members of Congress who have factories producing such weaponry and bases housing them in their districts.

So, here we are in a world in which the Pentagon plans to spend another $1.7 trillion(and no, that is not a typo!) “recapitalizing” its nuclear triad, and so in a world that is guaranteed to remain haunted forever by a possible future doomsday, the specter of nuclear mushroom clouds, and a true “end-times” catastrophe.

I Join AF Space Command Only to Find Myself Under 2,000 Feet of Granite

My first military assignment in 1985 was at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado with Air Force Space Command. That put me in America’s nuclear command post during the last few years of the Cold War. I also worked in the Space Surveillance Center and on a battle staff that brought me into the Missile Warning Center. So, I was exposed, in a relatively modest way (if anything having to do with nuclear weapons can ever be considered “modest”), to what nuclear war would actually be like and forced to think about it in a way most Americans don’t.

Each time I journeyed into Cheyenne Mountain, I walked or rode through a long tunnel carved out of granite. The buildings inside were mounted on gigantic springs (yes, springs!) that were supposed to absorb the shock of any nearby hydrogen bomb blast in a future war with the Soviet Union. Massive blast doors that looked like they belonged on the largest bank vault in the universe were supposed to keep us safe, though in a nuclear war they might only have ensured our entombment. They were mostly kept open, but every now and then they were closed for a military exercise.

The author (right) with Tom Engelhardt

I was a “space systems test analyst.” The Space Surveillance Center ran on a certain software program that needed periodic testing and evaluation and I helped test the computer software that kept track of all objects orbiting the Earth. Back then, there were just over 5,000 of them. (Now, that number’s more like 45,000 and space is a lot more crowded — perhaps too crowded.)

Anyhow, what I remember most vividly were military exercises where we’d run through different potentially world-ending scenarios. (Think of the movie War Gameswith Matthew Broderick.) One exercise simulated a nuclear attack on the United States. No, it wasn’t like some Hollywood production. We just had monochrome computer displays with primitive graphics, but you could certainly see missile tracks emerging from the Soviet Union, crossing the North Pole, and ending at American cities.

Even though there were no fancy (fake) explosions and no other special effects, simply realizing what was possible and how we would visualize it if it were actually to happen was, as I’m sure you can imagine, a distinctly sobering experience and not one I’ve ever forgotten.

That “war game” should have shaken me up more than it did, however. At the time, we had a certain amount of fatalism about the possibility of nuclear war, something captured in the posters of the era that told you what to do in case of a nuclear attack. The final step was basically to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. That was indeed my attitude.

Rather than obsess about Armageddon, I submerged myself in routine. There was a certain job to be done, procedures to be carried out, discipline to adhere to. Remember, of course, that this was also the era of the rise of the nuclear freeze protest movement that was demanding the U.S. and the Soviet Union reach an agreement to halt further testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons. (If only, of course!) In addition, this was the time of the hit film The Day After, which tried to portray the aftermath of a nuclear war in the United States. In fact, on a midnight shift in Cheyenne Mountain, I even read Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising, which envisioned the Cold War gone hot, a Third World War gone nuclear.

Of course, if we had thought about nuclear war every minute of every day, we might indeed have been cowering under our sheets. Unfortunately, as a society, except in rare moments like the nuclear freeze movement one, we neither considered nor generally grasped what nuclear war was all about (even though nine countries now possess such weaponry and the likelihood of such a war only grows). Unfortunately, that lack of comprehension (and so protest) is one big reason why nuclear war remains so chillingly possible.

If anything, such a war has been eerily normalized in our collective consciousness and we’ve become remarkably numb to and fatalistic about it. One characteristic of that reality was the anesthetizing language that we used then (and still use) when it came to nuclear matters. We in the military spoke in acronyms or jargon about “flexible response,” “deterrence,” and what was then known as “mutually assured destruction” (or the wiping out of everything). In fact, we had a whole vocabulary of different words and euphemisms we could use so as not to think too deeply about the unthinkable or our possible role in making it happen.

My Date With Trinity

After leaving Cheyenne Mountain and getting a master’s degree, I co-taught a course on the making and use of the atomic bomb at the Air Force Academy. That was in 1992, and we actually took the cadets on a field trip to Los Alamos where the first nuclear weapon had largely been developed. Then we went on to the Trinity test sitein Alamogordo, New Mexico, where, of course, that first atomic device was tested and that, believe me, was an unforgettable experience. We walked around and saw what was left of the tower where Robert Oppenheimer and crew suspended the “gadget” (nice euphemism!) for testing that bomb on July 16, 1945, less than a month before two atomic bombs would be dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroying both of them and killing perhaps 200,000 people. Basically (I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn), nothing’s left of that tower except for its concrete base and a couple of twisted pieces of metal. It certainly does make you reflect on the sheer power of such weaponry. It was then and remains a distinctly haunted landscape and walking around it a truly sobering experience.

And when I toured the Los Alamos lab right after the collapse of the other great superpower of that moment, the Soviet Union, it was curious how glum the people I met there were. The mood of the scientists was like: hey, maybe I’m going to have to find another job because we’re not going to be building all these nuclear weapons anymore, not with the Soviet Union gone. It was so obviously time for America to cash in its “peace dividends” and the scientists’ mood reflected that.

Now, just imagine that 33 years after I took those cadets there, Los Alamos is once again going gangbusters, as our nation plans to “invest” another $1.7 trillion in a “modernized” nuclear triad (imagine what that means in terms of ultimate destruction!) that we (and the rest of the world) absolutely don’t need. To be blunt, today that outrages me. It angers me that all of us, whether those like me who served in uniform or your average American taxpayer, have sacrificed so much to create genocidal weaponry and a distinctly world-ending arsenal. Worse yet, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, we didn’t even try to change course. And now the message is: Let’s spend staggering amounts of our tax dollars on even more apocalyptic weaponry. It’s insanity and, no question about it, it’s also morally obscene.

The Glitter of Nuclear Weapons

That ongoing obsession with total destruction, ultimate annihilation, reflects the fact that the United States is led by moral midgets. During the Vietnam War years, the infamous phrase of the time was that the U.S. military had to “destroy the town to save it” (from communism, of course). And for 70 years now, America’s leaders have tacitly threatened to order the destruction of the world to save it from a rival power like Russia or China. Indeed, nuclear war plans in the early 1960s already envisioned a massive strike against Russia and China, with estimates of the dead put at 600 million, or “100 Holocausts,” as Daniel Ellsberg of Vietnam War fame so memorably put it.

Take it from this retired officer: you simply can’t trust the U.S. military with that sort of destructive power. Indeed, you can’t trust anyone with that much power at their fingertips. Consider nuclear weapons akin to the One Ring of Power in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Anyone who puts that ring on is inevitably twisted and corrupted.

Freeman Dyson, a physicist of considerable probity, put it well to documentarian Jon Else in his film The Day After Trinity. Dyson confessed to his own “ring of power” moment:

“I felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it’s there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles — this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.”

I’ve felt something akin to that as well. When I wore a military uniform, I was in some sense a captive to power. The military both captures and captivates. There’s an allure of power in the military, since you have a lot of destructive power at your disposal.

Of course, I wasn’t a B-1 bomber pilot or a missile-launch officer for ICBMs, but even so, when you’re part of something that’s so immensely, even world-destructively powerful, believe me, it does have an allure to it. And I don’t think we’re usually fully aware of how captivating that can be and how much you can want to be a part of that.

Even after their service, many veterans still want to go up in a warplane again or take a tour of a submarine, a battleship, or an aircraft carrier for nostalgic reasons, of course, but also because you want to regain that captivating feeling of being so close to immense — even world-ending — power.

The saying that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” may never be truer than when it comes to nuclear war. We even have expressions like “use them or lose them” to express how ICBMs should be “launched on warning” of a nuclear attack before they can be destroyed by an incoming enemy strike. So many years later, in other words, the world remains on even more of a nuclear hair-trigger, the pistol loaded and cocked to our collective heads, just waiting for news that will push us over the edge, that will make those trigger fingers of ours too itchy to resist the urge to put too much pressure on that nuclear trigger.

No matter how many bunkers we build, no matter that the world’s biggest bunker tunneled out of a mountain, the one I was once in, still exists, nothing will save us if we allow the glitter of nuclear weapons to flash into preternatural thermonuclear brightness.

Copyright 2025 William J. Astore